Share the Journey of the Transfiguration: Listen! This is HIs Beloved Son

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea

Second Sunday in Lent, March 1, 2015
Saints Peter & Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ

From the cloud came a voice, "This is my Beloved Son. Listen to Him." (Mark 9:7)

Today’s Gospel takes us on a journey. 

Jesus takes three of His disciples up a high mountain (Mark 9:2-10). When I was in the seminary our class went to the Holy Land. While we were there, one of the places we visited was the mountain of the Transfiguration. 

It is a high mountain. As we rode the bus up that steep mountain, I was thinking that it was not an easy or short climb. I imagine that it took much time and effort for Our Lord and His disciples to climb it. Our Lord’s disciples were probably wondering, what is the point of doing all this?

  Yet, when they got to the top of the mountain, I assume the three disciples realized it was worth the climb. Our Lord transfigures in front of their eyes, manifesting His divinity. His face shines with the brilliance of the sun. His garments become dazzlingly bright. Moses and Elijah appear conversing with Jesus…

As we reflect on the Transfiguration, we are reminded that this special time was not for the sake of Our Lord. His Transfiguration was for the sake of His disciples and for us.

My brothers and sisters, each one of us are on a journey. We each have a purpose in life. The Transfiguration of Our Lord shows who He is and reveals what we are to become. Our Lord Jesus is the Son of God. We are to become sons of God though Him. However, we are reminded that the Transfiguration does not come simply by climbing a mountain. It comes from accepting the Cross. Jesus and His apostles had already begun the final journey to Jerusalem.

When our Lord was transfigured in His glory, Peter wanted to stay on top of the mountain. He wanted to build three tents, one for Moses, one for Elijah and one for Jesus. But Our Lord reminds Peter that this could not be. 

No. They had to come down from the mountain so that Our Lord could share His glory with the rest of humanity. How did our Lord share His glory with us? By dying on the Cross. "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (John 12:32)

Our Lord Jesus is the image of God. He calls each one of us to be transfigured in His glory. This journey of transformation begins at our Baptism, but it is not yet complete.

If we want to share in the glory of Our Lord, we too must share in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 

This means that we must die to the sinful nature of our humanity and live in the Spirit. We must strive to overcome our disordered desires and strive to live pure lives. It is then that the Light of the Lord lives inside us. As our Lord offered His Body as a living sacrifice, we too are to offer our bodies as a holy, living sacrifice acceptable to the Lord….

If we want to be transformed in Jesus, than we are to live in faith. Even our Lord Jesus who is God had to rely on faith. He prayed in sweat to His Father while in the Garden of Gethsemane. He cried out on the Cross, “Father, why have you abandoned me?” 

Through faith, the power of Christ is manifested in us because we rely not on ourselves but on God. It is through faith that we can allow our relationship with God to change our personal identity.

Sometimes God gives us special glimpses of His glory in order to strengthen us for our journey of faith. We see this in the lives of many saints who had special revelations of God in order to strengthen them in their trials.

Yet, God calls us to not rely on personal revelations. God wants to see what we are made of. He wants to see if we truly love Him. It is when we faithfully abandon ourselves to God that we discover He not only gives us what we need, but He gives us strength we never knew we had.

“Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the messenger.

“Do not do the least thing to him.

I know now how devoted you are to God,

since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.” (Gen 22:12)

In today’s first reading we hear that God put Abraham to the test (Gen 22: 1-18). God also puts us to the test. He wants to see if we truly love Him. Yet, we find that if we are obedient to His Word, He blesses us tremendously.

Again the LORD’s messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said: “I swear by myself, declares the LORD,that because you acted as you did in not withholding from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing— all this because you obeyed my command.”  (Gen 22:15-18)

Finally, if we want to share in the transfiguration of our Lord, we must listen to God. 

When our Lord was transfigured the voice of the Father said, “This is my Beloved Son. Listen to Him.” We should listen to our Lord. He says a lot of good stuff in the Gospels. He tells us what marriage is. He explains adultery… He tells us about lust, pride, sloth… He calls us to have faith and to persevere in prayer. Our Lord tells us about all the things we need to do to attain eternal life. Most importantly, Our Lord backs up His words by His cross.

Fr. John Paul Shea 

My brothers and sisters, each one of us is on a journey. The goal of our Christian life is to one day be transfigured into the light and glory of Our Lord. Our Lord has given us the means to get there. The question is, are we willing to pick up our cross?

Would you like to read more homilies from Fr. John Paul Shea? Here is one from the first Sunday of Lent: Climb Aboard the Ark of Our Salvation!

LIBERALS ARGUE ABORTION HOMICIDE IS JUSTIFIED

The Moral Battle: 
So What if Killing is Wrong?

By Christopher Ziegler

@CZWriting on Twitter

In my last essay on the subject of abortion, I posed the question I think everyone should have to answer when deciding his or her position: Is a fetus a human life? I said that if our answer to this question was “no” then we have very little reason to be outraged by abortion, but that if our answer was “yes” then we have every reason to be outraged. Around the same time, Michael Novak published an article in Patheos titled Abortion: the intellectual battle has been won. Novak argues that advances in science and medicine since the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Decision that legalized abortion, Roe vs. Wade, have inarguably answered my question in the affirmative.

At the moment of conception, an individual and unique strand of human DNA is created, one which never existed before and will never exist again. This DNA strand contains the complete instructions for building a person. Advances in medicine now make it possible for premature babies to survive outside the womb at 20 weeks, half the time of a full pregnancy. Meanwhile, ultrasound technology has given us a clearer picture than ever of just how fast life progresses in the womb.

At 22 days, the baby’s heart beats for the first time. It will beat 54 million times before birth. The human brain is sometimes called the last frontier of science, yet this organ makes its first appearance a mere 3 weeks after conception! Now that we know this, those who still believe the old Darwinian folktale that a baby goes through the stages of a fish are deserving of ridicule. As Novak concludes, “This great fact may take a decade or more to become evident to all, but the intellectual underpinnings of the abortion regime have been washed away.”

Let’s not pop any corks just yet. After all, the abortion debate has never really been a question of facts. It is a moral battle between those who see human life as inherently valuable and those who do not. It is another chapter in the enduring American debate over who we define as a person and who we define as a non-person. Indeed, the scientific evidence that abortion ends life does not upset the abortion regime in the least. Their premise remains what it has always been: so what? In fact, this is the basis of an article written by liberal blogger Mary Elizabeth Williams titled, “So what if abortion ends life?”

Published by the progressive blog Salon in

Salon writer Mary Elizabeth Williams
She suffers from melanoma
Please keep her in your prayers

2013, So what if abortion ends life? is a startling example of nihilistic liberalism. Beginning with the statement, “I believe that life starts at conception,” Ms. Williams makes it clear where she stands on the “life” question: “I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life,” she writes. She even chastises pro-choice folks for trying to invent their own definitions of when life begins, which she says leads them to draw “stupid semantic lines in the sand.” Nevertheless, she says this doesn't make her “one iota less solidly pro-choice” and that, in her words, “if by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant, you bet your ass I’d have an abortion. I’d have the World’s Greatest Abortion.”

She hurls all the usual invective at the pro-life community, scolding us as “wing-nuts” and decrying the “diabolically clever” move of co-opting the word “life.” She hisses at the “sneaky, dirty tricks of the anti-choice lobby” for trying to appropriate what she calls “the concept of life.” She clearly can’t stand the idea that any pro-life person could ever have the audacity to think, “That if we call a fetus a life they can go down the road of making abortion murder.” I suppose it would not help to point out to Ms. Williams that the killing of one human by another is, in fact, the very definition of murder.

 As I said, the abortion debate is at the most

fundamental level a struggle between those who see human life as inherently valuable and those who do not. This comes through clearly when Ms. Williams excoriates what she calls “the sentimental fiction that no one with a heart—and certainly no one who’s experienced the wondrous miracle of family life—can possibly resist tiny fingers and tiny toes growing inside a woman’s body.” The sarcasm makes clear that Ms. Williams regards family life as neither wondrous nor a miracle. I invite the reader to contemplate what a society would look like in which our notions of babies and mothers were generally regarded as “sentimental fictions.”

Despite the vitriol, Ms. Williams’ central point is not a novel one. What she is arguing is simply this: abortion may indeed be a type of homicide—but it is justifiable homicide. To Ms. Williams, the fetus is just collateral damage in the feminist war for equality. Hence, she can’t get all sentimental about life and babies. “Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal,” she writes. The more important thing to her is “the roads that women who have choice get to go down.” For the sake of this progress, she is willing to

think of a human fetus as a “life worth sacrificing.” 

Williams’ case hinges on this statement: “a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides.” But of course a fetus can be a human life with having the same rights as a woman! She is equivocating on what she means by “same rights.” No rational person believes that a fetus and an adult should have the “same rights.” She seems to be saying that the pro-life argument depends on the claim that the fetus should have rights equal to its mother. Again, this is dishonest because she is omitting the difference between natural and civil rights.

Civil rights are the written laws found in the amendments to the US Constitution and in other legislation. Our natural rights are enumerated in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Natural rights do not exist in law because they cannot exist in law. They are, by definition, natural—that is, not man made. We do not have our natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness because we are good looking, smart or talented. We do not have them because we are able-bodied or healthy. We do not have them because we are wanted or loved. We have them just because we are human, and nothing more. Civil rights, on the other hand, are legal interpretations which have been derived from our natural rights.

No one seriously argues that a fetus has the right to bear arms or the right to vote or the right to an attorney. No one seriously argues that a fetus is equal to its mother or any other adult in terms of its contribution to society. But that is not the question. The question remains what it has always been: is the fetus a human life? Ms. Williams already answered that question when she said: “Thats what I believe a fetus is: a human life.” But if it is a human life then it is, by definition, entitled to its natural right to human life. If so, then abortion, which takes away that life, is wrong.

Ms. Williams’ fundamental premise that, “A fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides” is false because it is possible for a person to have natural rights without being entitled to civil rights, and a fetus is just such a person. Nor can one person’s civil rights trump another person’s natural right to life without due process, because life is the most fundamental natural right and the basis of all other rights. Perhaps Ms. Williams does not see this because she does not believe there is a difference between natural and civil rights. 

The Declaration of Independence says that our Creator has endowed us with our natural rights. But if there is no Creator then men have not been created in any meaningful sense. This means that men have no essential qualities and are but the purely accidental products of blind forces, hence they can’t be said to naturally possess “inalienable” rights. It follows that rights are nothing more than legal fictions conferred by the powers that be. Hence, according to a purely atheistic view, there is no real distinction between natural and civil rights—all rights being merely civil rights.

Some atheists will undoubtedly argue that this controversy does not matter because we can just choose to respect people’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as civil rights even if there is no such thing as natural rights. But there is a problem with this quiet assumption. If humans do not exist by a special act of creation, then there is no basis for drawing a distinction between human life and other forms animal life (other than for purposes of taxonomic classification). 

Peter Singer 

We’re then left to the slippery task of explaining why it’s okay to kill a fetus but not a worm. There are three options: either we’re going to have to respect literally all life; or, conversely, have no respect for any life at all; or, decide by the arbitrary dictates of taste which life we choose to respect and which we don’t. I’m not making this stuff up: atheist ethicist Peter Singer, a professor at Princeton University, actually argues that we should extend human rights to chimps but that infanticide is a-ok.

Infanticide???

He also once argued that bestiality is quite all right, provided that the sex is “mutually satisfying” for both man and beast. Again, I invite the reader to imagine what society would look like if Mr. Singer’s views were widely held.

And there is an additional problem. If there is no God then there is no reason to regard humans as an exceptional species. But when we lose our belief in human exceptionalism we necessarily also lose the view that people are inherently valuable just for being people. We then have to pinpoint the moment in time that they do become valuable, and explain how this can be. Now Ms. Williams makes clear that she believes life begins at conception. She also makes clear that she believes it’s acceptable to kill life even after conception. What her article fails to specify is that magic moment when it becomes not okay to kill life. 

She writes that, “It seems absurd to suggest that the only thing that makes us fully human is the short ride out some lady’s vagina. That distinction may apply neatly legally, but philosophically, surely we can do better.” This same point is often used as a pro-life argument: that it’s absurd that the difference between a person who can be killed lawfully and a person who is protected under the law comes down to a matter of inches. But the recognition of this absurdity sounds ominous coming from the mouth of Ms. Williams, given her stated support for “unrestricted reproductive freedom” (my italics). This would seem to suggest that Ms. Williams would justify infanticide, or what her ilk now likes to refer to as “post-birth abortion.” To be fair, she does not say she supports infanticide, but her argument offers no serious philosophical objection. 

Abortion is wrong because it clearly falls short of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Atheists often like to boast that they can uphold the Golden Rule, too, without having to believe in the supernatural. I would like to think that this is true—that all people can assent to the objective reason found in the Golden Rule regardless of their personal beliefs. But although atheists like to say this, they do not live up to it when they fail to apply it in the case of abortion. I think our 40th president summed up this situation well when he said, “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.”

Into the Woods: Christopher Ziegler 

Did you enjoy this post. Read others by Christopher Ziegler:
The Battle for the Identity of Man: A House Divided

To be Human or Not to Be: That is the Question About Abortion

Also on Abortion in this Blog: 
MURDER OF INNOCENTS: Out of Evil Comes a Greater Good

REASONS FOR ABORTION: Fear Tops the List

Climb Aboard the Ark of Our Salvation!

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea

First Sunday in Lent, Feb 22, 2015

Saints Peter & Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ

Happy Lent! 

In today’s first reading for the first Sunday of Lent, we are given the opportunity to reflect on the story of Noah (Gen 9:8-15.)

We do not know when the story of Noah took place, except that it happened after sin entered into our world. Men had become very violent and corrupted. Noah -- blameless among his peers -- finds favor with God. So God says that He is going to destroy the world by flood, but He will save Noah and His family. 

So Noah receives instructions to build an ark and fill it with animals to keep Noah's family safe and preserve life. 

Now, the Bible tells us that the great flood  covered the entire earth -- the greatest disaster in human history. Nothing else has even come close. The Flood waters rose above all the world’s mountains. The Earth’s crust heaved and buckled unleashing terrible volcanic eruptions and massive earthquakes like the world has never seen before or since.

All cities were totally destroyed. The rains continued for forty days, and the earth continued to shake causing huge tsunami waves to sweep across the sinking land. So great was the destruction that every human being died, along with millions of animals and plants. 

The only people spared were Noah’s faithful family. God had prepared Noah and his family for this great disaster because Noah and his family sought God. 

After this great  disaster, God promises Noah that He will never again destroy the world by  flood. He enjoins Noah to repopulate the earth and enjoy all God’s blessings. 

Yet, God knew that sin would continue to mar his creation. God had created humanity out of love and he wanted to bring us back to Himself. So God picked Abraham and made a covenant with him and his descendants.  God  then gave His law and commandments  through Moses, and He sent His prophets to testify to the law. Finally, God would send His Son as savior of the world.

Fr. John Paul Shea

My brothers and sisters, today’s reading of the story of Noah calls us to reflect on the saving action of God. 

In fact, the ark of Noah can be seen as a symbol of God’s salvation in our present day. As Noah was saved through the wood of the boat, we are being saved through the wood of Our Lord’s cross. Through His cross our Lord has given us His Church to be His ark of salvation until He comes again. It is the Church that carries God’s people through the rising floods of sin today. It is the Church that preserves life. 

Our Lord is calling everyone into His Church so that all peoples will be saved. Yet, there are many who are shunning this boat of salvation because they do not want to change their ways. 

In today’s Gospel Our Lord says, “Repent, and believe in the gospel!” This is what we need to do to be saved. Jesus has told us that the kingdom of God is at hand, so we need to prepare by acknowledging our need for God and by striving to change our lives!

In the end, we do not know how many will be saved, but our Lord has indicated that it will be few. 

In the Gospel of Luke, someone asks our Lord how many will be saved. Our Lord answers by saying, “strive to enter the narrow gate…” 

Again, in the Gospel of Matthew, Our Lord says, “Many are invited, but few are chosen.” 

Again in the Gospel of Matthew, Our Lord says, “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father, who is in Heaven.'”

My brothers and sisters, our Catholic Church is the Ark of Salvation. It is the Church where we come to be separated from the world that is perishing. It is the Church where we come to be safe from the flood of sin that surrounds our society on all sides. We are given this protection through the Sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist. 

The tides of the world today want to overwhelm our Church. The spirit of the world strives to puncture holes into the Bark of Peter through its influence of immorality so that the Ark of Christ will sink!

Bark of St. Peter

But our Church will never sink. As Noah’s ark was built according to God’s plan, so too our Church is built according to God’s directions and plan. Our Church is built upon the foundation of the Apostles and its doctrines hold the whole structure of the Church in place. 

The Church has faced many storms in the past, and it will encounter greater storms in the future. But the gates of hell will never prevail against it!

As we prepare for Easter this Lent, let us praise God for His gift of salvation to us that is given through His Church. Let us cling to the Ark of our faith so that we can be carried through the rising floodwaters of our society and be placed safely onto the shores of eternal life.

They have actually found Noah's Ark! You 

might like to read about it. Noah's Ark Has Been Found. Why are They Keeping Us in The Dark?